Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Putin’s Easy Victories are All Behind Him, Any New Ones Will be Harder or Impossible, Oreshkin Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, October 19 – Vladimir Putin
finds himself “in a mousetrap where the free cheese is already eaten” and where
prospects for more put him at risk at home and abroad, Dmitry Oreshkin says, a
poetic way of saying that his easy victories are now behind him and that any
new ones will be harder or even impossible to achieve.

That
is why Putin has started his use of nuclear blackmail, “the only sphere” where
Russia has rough parity with the West, Oreshkin continues. “Putin does not have
any other levels of influence on his neighbors. But even more, he continues to
be a prisoner of the geopolitical thinking of Stalin’s time, where he who
controls territory uses it. But already this is not so.”

The
use of nuclear threats works “to a certain degree.” No one wants a nuclear war,
and many in the West are prepared to do many things to prevent one. But that
doesn’t mean that governments in the West are ready to make concessions as a
result: A few people are but most have taken Putin’s measure and are responding
on that basis.

“Now,”
Oreshkin says, “Putin is in a situation in which he acts predictably and his
earlier success was based on his unpredictability.” No one expected him to take
Crimea, and consequently, “no one was prepared. But today even his
unpredictability is predictable. Everyone understands who he is.”

Everyone
is ready for the renewal of a Russian attack in the Donbass, and everyone knows
what the response will be: “lethal arms for Ukraine and a new cycle of
sanctions. Putin can’t permit that,” and so he will sacrifice the LDNR just as
he did Novorossiya. Moscow simply doesn’t have the funds for such actions.

“In
order to preserve his victorious image, Putin will raise the stakes.” But he
cannot do so economically now that Europe and even Ukraine are no longer
dependent on Russian oil and gas.And
what is most important now: Russians can see this and are becoming ever less
supportive and ever more disappointed in Putin.

Oreshkin
argues that “Putin needs a victorious local war, but those have already
happened in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine.” He isn’t going to get on in Syria,
and so he lashes out at the US.“But the
Americans understand his game, and therefore they completely rationally respond
boosting anti-ballistic missile defense and putting pressure on the Russian
economy.

What
remains for Putin? “Only pathetic rhetoric” and playing the nuclear card. But “this
policy is becoming ever more paranoid, less constructive and ever more
hysterical.People aren’t idiots,” and
they are slowly but surely forgetting their enthusiasm about the annexation of
Crimea.

Could
Putin attack Latvia? The answer is no. Could he expand the war in Ukraine?
Again now because “everyone is ready for this.”What can he do to “raise his rating? Only by using propaganda and buying
votes in the West.”But those who must
deal with him can hardly be comfortable.

All
of Putin’s talk about nuclear war can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, Oreshkin
concludes, something extraordinarily “dangerous for all countries and in the
first instance for the Russian Federation itself.”